Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Viking fans will be wowed by the superb Viking Ship Museum, which displays five Viking
ships discovered at the bottom of Roskilde Fjord. The museum is made up of two main
sections - the Viking Ship Hall, where the boats themselves are kept; and Museumsø,
where archaeological work takes place. There are free 45-minute guided tours in English
daily at noon and 3pm from late June to the end of August, and at noon on weekends from
May to late June and in September.
Viking Ship Hall
Roskilde's Viking-era inhabitants were expecting trouble in the mid-11th century. Five
clinker-built ships, all made between 1030 and 1042, were deliberately scuttled in a nar-
row channel 20km north of Roskilde, presumably to block an attacking army. Once they
had been holed and sunk, a mass of stones was piled on top to create an underwater barrier.
In 1962 a coffer dam was built around the barrier and sea water was pumped out. Within
four months, archaeologists were able to remove the mound of stones and excavate the
ships, whose wooden hulks were in thousands of pieces. These ship fragments were
painstakingly reassembled onto skeleton frames in the purpose-built Viking Ship Hall.
This brutal-looking minimalist construction becomes something magical inside, where the
ghostly boats seem to float once more on the waters of the fjord.
The ships, known as Skuldelev 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, show off the range of the Viking ship-
wrights: there's an ocean-going trading vessel, a 30m warship for international raiding, a
coastal trader, a 17m warship probably used around the Baltic, and a fishing boat. Carbon
dating and dendrochronology have discovered further secrets, including their builders'
geographical scope -
Skuldelev 1,
for example, was made in Norway, whereas
Skuldelev 2
came from Dublin.
Interesting displays about the Viking Age put the boats into a historical context, and the
basement cinema runs a 14-minute film (in Danish, English, French, German, Italian and
Spanish) about the 1962 excavation. There's also a fascinating exhibition and film docu-
menting the nail-biting 2007 voyage of the
Havhingsten fra Glendalough
from Roskilde to
Dublin and back. Based on the 60-oared warship
Skuldelev 2,
it's the largest Viking ship
reconstruction to date (an incredible 340 trees went into its creation).
Museumsø
On Museum Island, adjacent to the Viking Ship Hall, craftspeople use Viking-era tech-
niques and tools to build replicas of Viking ships.
Ottar, Havhingsten fra Glendalough,
